Note: This post is from September 3, 2008

So far, the best word I can come up with to describe Denver is "nice." I don't feel I've seen enough to sense the soul of the city. Some places bare their soul on first glance, others take some wining and dining: Denver seems to be the latter. Mostly all I've seen is the downtown area, and downtown areas are almost always pretty bland. I can't tell if there is any Denver-specific culture. I have seen a lot of chain stores.

I explored this morning by walking along the 16th Street Mall, which is an outdoor pedestrianised area. It is pleasant to walk down and leads right to Civic Center Park, which is a pretty green area with some fountains, statues, and the Colorado State House. The Mall does seem to get a lot of use, with a good amount of foot traffic. It's nice.

The one thing I can definitely see is an appreciation of horses, along with horseriders and the rodeo. There are several statues of someone or other riding a wild bronco around the city. And of course, the city's football team is the Broncos. I did not see any cowboy hats or cowboy culture, but then again in the financial center you wouldn't see that anyway.

I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which was a ten dollar cab ride each way, but worth the trip. It's a good sized museum with lots of exhibits: gems, Colorado mining (silver mostly), lots and lots of animals, and some dinosaur bones. Your typical natural history museum collection, but a big one. The museum is situated in City Park. I didn't have time to explore the park itself, but I could see it has a lot of space and water and grass and paths and places for people to hang out and picnic and run and sit and have fun when the weather is nice. It's in a suburban area not too far from downtown. I didn't see much of a transitional area - just straight from downtown to suburbs. On the other side of the city, we did pass through some rougher, industrial-looking areas.

After lunch in Denver, we drove through the Rockies. It's funny, the whole "Mile High City" thing. I expected Denver to be in the mountains, but it's not. Approaching the city from the east, rising up from the Great Plains of Kansas, there is a very very gradual slope. In fact the eastern part of Colorado is indistinguishable from Kansas except the road is a slight upgrade the whole way, and the vegetation slowly changes from corn and oats to more scrubby grass and weeds: the most boring scenery so far. Once nice thing about Agatha, our GPS, is she tells us our current elevation, so we could watch as we ascended, even when it was not obvious. Thinking about the geological history of this area, the slope makes sense - we're coming up on the shore of an ancient sea.

It's only past Denver where the Rocky Mountains really start. Here we veered off the main highway, Rt. 70, onto a more secondary road, Rt. 40. This was with some trepidation, as the maps don't really show the condition or steepness of roads. Several sections of Rt. 40 are one lane in each direction, with some pretty serious downgrades or upgrades. It can be a little intimidating descending at a seven percent grade while a giant oil truck is bearing down on you from behind, knowing that no matter how good your brakes are, that's no guarantee the truck will be able to stop. I took a cautious approach through the mountains, letting aggressive drivers pass when I could. I have to admit, though, Etta the Jetta did a great job in the mountains. The temperature gauge never budged, and the brakes worked perfectly.

The optical illusions can be interesting, though. There are times when it really looks like you're going down, but when you step on the gas nothing happens, or the car's automatic transmission downshifts because you're really going up, and quite steeply. It's something I learned to watch out for.

The scenery here is really spectacular. That's where taking the minor roadways pays off. The trees are almost all pine, and they're perfectly straight, extremely narrow, and very tall. Giant wire-free telephone poles, covered with dark green branches. I was also surprised at the variety of terrain. The Rockies are not just rocks. There are many green parts and a lot of water. Mountains give us mountain streams, mountain passes, mountain lakes, and of course, valleys. We passed through Yampa Valley, which is completely flat for long stretches, though still more than a mile high, and surrounded on all sides by peaks.

We had dinner in Steamboat Springs, which is a little oasis of yuppie-dom in the middle of the wilderness. It's quite touristy, as it's a major destination for winter sports, as well as hiking, rafting and other outdoor activities. Not for us, though. We're on the move. We just ate and went back to driving. We continued on to Craig, a small, somewhat nondescript Western town, but one with a less touristy feel and cheaper prices than Steamboat Springs, and just as close to the natural attractions. I'd like to come back here when I have more time to explore. Here we will spend the night.

Tomorrow, we will hit the town of Dinosaur, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah. I hope we get to see some fossils!